


Cypress Kisses

by lostprinceloki



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, As I always do, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2012-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-20 16:46:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostprinceloki/pseuds/lostprinceloki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This time it’s Dean asking him to come, to take his first steps, and he’ll be holding him from above- “I’m your angel, Cas”. </p><p>Sometime after episode eight, in which Castiel and Dean meet again after they parted ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cypress Kisses

**Author's Note:**

> After liveblogging Hunteri Heroici, I hollered a bit and then cried a bit more, and then wrote this because Castiel is my sun and stars and Dean is his sun and stars and wow can I stop making myself upset? Vague s8 spoilers I suppose? Please enjoy my rampant emotions in the medium of writing.

* * *

Carve out your heart for keeps in an old oak tree  
and hold me for goodbyes and whispered lullabyes  
and tell me I am still  
the man I'm supposed to be.  
I won't deny the pain,  
I won't deny the change,  
and should I fall from grace here with you  
will you leave me too?

 _Galapogos_ , Smashing Pumpkins.

* * *

 

**Cypress Kisses**

What he feels has nothing to which comparisons could be drawn and mapped out. He had no experiences, no atlas of morning constellations and cathedrals of blown-out sentiments that could only be lit with the stare of green into his blue tidal waves to reference. 

Liar, liar, liar, liar, Dean pounds this into his hands with his fists and Castiel can only clench them when he’s done and their breaths are softened cushions for the pain. Dean knows Castiel isn’t okay, they’re a sickness and the only medicine for their heartbreak is a poison so thick it could cast a veneer across all of heaven.

His bones creak and the only parts of him that Dean can’t understand-  _no, not yet_ \- are his smiles, and the crushing and melting of feeling from his toes to the watered atmospheres that stir in his eyes when Dean looks at him. 

He doesn’t need to look at him, even past him, and Castiel wants to vanish- but vanishing means more lies, and he can’t even turn his neck if Dean isn’t near, because he’ll choke on the tar and honey that rises from his stomach. He won’t be able to say a word to Dean if he does and it’s all he wants, to let Dean hear him.

His words are Dean’s, because he taught him that they’re tangible, that sometimes they burn skin like lilacs across roaring fires contorting into thin wisps of lavender and blackened stems. 

His stem is blackened, so dark- his words are Dean’s, he needs his petals to take the stem and make it worth something, when he- his stem, has burnt and smells of dug-up ash. They fit because they’re illusions, they’re pulsating in a disquieted, unnatural rhythm around one another. He’s taught him so much, he feels so  _alive_ \- it’s like he’s never had wings, and he can’t be sure if it’s a good thing or not.

Every time Castiel is ready to say goodbye, Dean gets closer to finding his way to put his fingertips to his wrist, look up into him and say, “Hello.”

Every time Castiel takes his final look at Dean, with tremulous knees and a plead for someone to _save him,_ Dean’s smile makes his throat open up and take another inhale. Everyday he knows he’s finally found Dean, that they’ve escaped, that they’re together, he leaves his grave and he’s been birthed, again, as if he has millions of years left to love. 

This time it’s Dean asking him to come, to take his first steps, and he’ll be holding him from above- “I’m your angel, Cas”.

He says it with a smirk, one that's ingrained in him, with every single locket of memory that warms him from end to end, an image that responds to the question of real love, one that pulls him through and out of the dark- and he’s losing breath, thinking about that smirk he adores, that he can’t be without. 

Suddenly he’s not gripping the earth alone at the wreckage of the world anymore. Dean’s with him, Dean’s fighting for him, Dean’s forgiving him, Dean’s forgetting so Castiel can someday look at himself and see someone deserving of his air, his sighs, his depths, those of which he can’t seem to dig himself out from. It’s all he wanted from him.

Dean comes to see him a week or so after they parted ways, and it’s too far and too close and yet so long. They hug, as if they’ve always have, as if it’s not another series of firsts, and Castiel doesn’t need to try to hold on.

The ancient remnants of Castiel’s entire universe settle themselves in Dean’s tortured breaths when he squeezes his fears through the evening tears and the hushed words asking Castiel not to leave him behind anymore. He nods into him.

It had been a long while without Castiel’s eyes pressed to the back of his neck and his ankles and his hips like his mother had when Dean slept because she wasn’t safe if Dean wasn’t. 

They don’t say a word when their shoulders touch. Castiel smiles but doesn’t look up. They don’t say a word when he touches all of Dean without a single finger. Dean laughs when Castiel finally does speak because only he can make him do so with neither cause nor care. 

They don’t say a word when Dean gets a call from Sam, worried and distraught and drained and Dean speaks to Castiel about what’s drowning in him, what’s bleeding through his muscle and organs like a waterfall. Castiel brings him close without telling him to come and the morning constellations are dim compared to Dean’s eyes in the moments when their breathing slows, and they let themselves remember all the things they’ve done, and all that they would do. 

For once he doesn’t worry, thoughts that brim and shimmer dull themselves until they fade back from where they came, as bubbles of irrelevance when he sees Castiel’s shoulders hunch in dreamless sleep. He’s never seen them like that, and it’s tearing through him. 

The day begins again.

It begins when Castiel rouses and it rains where they are, and he remembers all the nights he asked Father to bring the rain, to let it flood where he stood, because he wasn’t near Dean and he couldn’t do a thing to make him happy- no, to  _give_ him happiness.

Sometimes he just can’t be an angel, he thinks, and the rain will live in this darkness. Dean’s sleeping and he wants it to go away because soon Dean will  _go away_  and he can’t, _can’t,_ have it this way. 

He doesn’t want to protect him.

He wants to save him, again and again. Memories unravel and Dean’s sleeping still, and the motel is calming this time of day. Next time, in their next life, they’ll be perfect, he wants to promise this,  _he wants_ \- so much. 

They’re sitting, hours later, and Castiel has hot chocolate made and the smell of wintergreen blossoms as they drink, and the moments come in chafed intervals that tick away with every thin grin and pulsing eye flutter. Dean doesn’t bother to ask when he learned how to make it. 

“So…time to flap the ole wings and fly away, huh, Cas? Where to?”

Not a touch of humor graces his ears, but he gives him his best laugh. 

Castiel can’t come with them. Castiel can’t be without them. Dean can see the veil that he clutches and he wants Castiel to open his palms and  _reach for him,_ but now’s not the time, not yet. He lives in shadowed lands, and Dean won’t stop until he pulls him out. He’s done it before. He can’t name what he’s after, but it’s an aching, eternal loss even having Castiel across the room from him. 

Castiel doesn’t say a word, so Dean keeps speaking. He doesn’t look ashamed to be speaking, and Castiel can’t help smiling again, a small going-away smile, and he hasn’t really stopped all this time, when it was just them two. 

“You keep me going, Cas. So we won’t be real far apart, do you get what I’m saying? You understand whatever I mean, right?” 

Castiel is falling over him and it’s written every time their bodies touch and yes, he understands. Why things never change when they keep moving, he won’t understand, but he’s come down to meet him, he’s standing on Dean’s ground, he’ll rip his wings from the root and bleed himself from his back to his heels for Dean to realize that yes, he understands.

But he does realize, because this is  _his_  Dean and he knew he would, and they aren’t just on the same ground, they’re not on earth, they aren’t in heaven or hell, and purgatory can’t see them. They’re finally in their own place and Dean can kiss him like this, and maybe things  _have_  changed just as they have.

Castiel stands up and meets him from across the small motel carpet, and all the flowers in his veins wilt and are birthed again. They’re tangling and twisting in each other, and he knows Dean can smell the flowers, and maybe he smiles a bit more when Dean laughs into their kiss as it deepens.

He’s come down to meet him, and Dean was waiting for him all this time. 


End file.
